Supercomputers/Systems/Midway (UChicago)
USA · operational · hpc
Midway (UChicago)
Also known as UChicago RCC Midway
Operated by University of Chicago .
Phase 1 seed dataset, compiled by hand. These rows were built from public operator, laboratory and vendor sources. A mechanical second-reader pass has since fetched every cited source: 1092 of 1153 systems have a readable citation that names them, and 40 are genuinely weakly sourced. Every claim carries its source and a confidence tier. Treat anything below verified as a lead, not a citation.
Measured performance
- Rmax
- 130.16 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 143.10 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 91.0%
- Cores
- 6,880
- Power
- 142.91 kW
- Per watt
- 0.9 GF/W
Figures are as last publicly reported for the configuration described below, not a live measurement. Where a system was upgraded in place, the post-upgrade configuration is shown and the earlier one appears in the timeline.
What this machine is made of
One row per supplier relationship. “Supplier at build” is the company that shipped the part at the time; where that company has since been acquired, the parent it rolls up to today is shown beside it. That distinction is what makes ticker-level aggregation possible across a thirty-year dataset.
| Role | Part | Supplier at build | Quantity | Confidence | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Integrator | - IBM iDataPlex DX360M4 nodes | IBM | - | Reported | top500.orgnews.uchicago.edu |
| CPU | Intel Xeon E5-2670 CPUs x86-64 · 8C · 2.6 GHz · 32 nm · 115 W Intel Xeon E5-2670 8C 2.6 GHz | Intel | - | Reported | top500.org |
| Interconnect | Mellanox InfiniBand FDR Interconnect Fat tree · 56 Gb/s per 4x port · About 1 microsecond Infiniband FDR | Mellanox NVDANASDAQ
rolls up to NVIDIA | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
Cornerstone cluster of the University of Chicago's Research Computing Center, an IBM iDataPlex DX360M4 system with Xeon E5-2670 8-core CPUs and FDR InfiniBand. A University of Chicago news story of 19 November 2012 describes the 8 November 2012 opening with IBM present and the Midway cluster as having more than 3,000 cores at the time. TOP500 shows it growing: 416th in June 2012 (3,520 cores), 447th in November 2012 (4,160 cores), then its best placing of 303rd in June 2013 at 6,880 cores, 130.16 TFlop/s Rmax, 143.1 TFlop/s Rpeak and 142.91 kW, and 417th in November 2013. The figures here are the June 2013 run. Last evidence is the November 2013 list.
Timeline
Public list appearances
Pointers only: rank and edition, linking to the canonical entry. We do not reproduce list tables. See sourcing policy.
Change history
- 2026-10-09 Added Midway (UChicago), listed on the TOP500 in 2013-06
Source check
We fetched this system's own citations and recorded whether each page actually mentions it. This is a corroboration signal, not a fact check, and it is published so you can see how well the sourcing holds up rather than take it on trust.
| Cited source | Result | Found on the page |
|---|---|---|
| news.uchicago.edu | names system only | - |
| top500.org | names system and part | Intel Xeon E5-2670, Mellanox InfiniBand FDR |
Checked 2026-10-09 by pnpm verify. Re-run it and the table changes with the web.
Further reading
Operating a supercomputer
Acceptance testing, why "installed" and "in production" are six months apart, and the machine lifecycle.
Inside a node
Latency-optimised versus throughput-optimised processors, NUMA, and the end of the host-to-device copy.
The interconnect
Topologies, why latency and tail behaviour matter more than bandwidth, and how the fabric market consolidated.